Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Riviera premieres on Sundance Now today, and it has all the glamour, drama, and intrigue necessary for your next binge.
Julia Stiles — of the Bourne series and 10 Things I Hate About You fame — plays Georgina, an art dealer who moves to the French Riviera after marrying billionaire business mogul Constantine Clios (sounds like a rich dude name, right?). However, within the first ten minutes of the pilot, Constantine dies in a massive yacht explosion (sounds like a rich dude problem, right?), and it’s not long before Georgina realizes that her husband wasn’t the do-gooder he claimed to be. In order to protect the Clios family and its fortune, Georgina must adapt to the harsh criminal underbelly of Europe’s uber-rich, compromising her own integrity along the way.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not wrong. Just this summer, Netflix gave us Ozark, a show that, while great, fits squarely into the “husband gets involved in shady business dealings,” or “bad husband,” genre. Before Ozark, major hits like Breaking Bad and The Sopranos provided us with examples of an “anti-hero,” a man that is incredibly flawed yet also sympathetic. The men in Ozark, Breaking Bad, and The Sopranos may be involved in different criminal activities — money laundering, drug manufacturing, organized crime — but in each show, their descent into crime stems from a desire to protect their families. And in each case, these “bad husbands” are unable to do so on their own: they ultimately must turn to their wives to help fix the mess they’ve made.
In Riviera, Georgina is undoubtedly cleaning up her husband’s mess, but comparisons to male antihero shows stop there. **Minor spoilers for The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Ozark ahead**
First of all, Riviera begins where other shows in the “bad husband” genre end: it takes place after the antihero has died and after his wife has assumed control over the family. Riviera’s plot hinges on imagining what would happen if these shady-husband shows continued on after their male protagonists’ death (yeah, yeah, Tony isn’t confirmed dead, but it’s inevitable that both he and Ozark’s Marty Byrd will bite the dust). Would Carmela be able to protect her children from the consequences of their selfish father’s actions?
By beginning with Constantine’s death, Riviera makes Georgina the uncontested protagonist, never questioning for a second her ability to provide. Male anti-hero shows do the opposite:
when a “bad husband” starts doing sketchy stuff to care for his family, he does so out of an assumption that only he, not his wife, can solve the family’s problems. Even when a husband turns to his wife for help, he often does so begrudgingly or insists that his methods are better — like Breaking Bad‘s Walter does when Skyler tries to help him launder money. Riviera arrives with different assumptions than shows in the traditional husband-wife crime genre, and it’s refreshing to watch something in which a woman can just be a provider rather than first have to prove that she is one.
That’s not to say that Georgina is entirely comfortable with the life she’s thrust into after Constantine’s death. She’s wary of entering the world of organized crime, money laundering, and art fraud (I told you, rich people problems abound), and at first, she doesn’t believe that her husband was actually involved in this stuff. But once she begins adapting to Constantine’s crime-filled world, she’s just as committed to protecting the family and their way of life as her male antihero counterparts.
In more ways than one, Riviera is the natural continuation of the “bad husband” genre. The show’s creators allow Georgina to be flawed in her own right–not just as a response to her husband’s illicit practices, as is so often the case–and put women at the forefront of various criminal activities rather than relegating them to a supporting role in the action. The age of the male antihero may be coming to an end, but that of the female is just beginning.
